Oblogatory

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Bitter, Bitter Taste

EDIT: The above YouTube has been removed due to copyright violation... It was a clip from a film named Downfall, a German movie about the last few days in Hitler's life in a bunker under Berlin. For the YouTube version, they cleverly replaced the original subtitles for a conversation between Hitler and his cronies discussing their defeat as HD DVD supporters by Blu-Ray.

Well, that's the problem with simply having a YouTube as a post, I guess. I've been punished for my lack of posting creativity.

You can still buy 8-track players at flea markets and such, so if you blew a bunch of money on 8-tracks, you can still listen to them.

That's what is known as the Early Adopter's Solace: My HD DVD player will last a long time, and I'm sure I'll be able to pick up used ones for years to come, so at least I'll be able to watch my HD DVD discs for a while yet. Like those dudes that still had Betamax players on their console shelves as late as 2002, when the Betamax product line was actually finally discontinued. I bet that's a factoid you're surprised to hear, huh?

Betamax hung on until 2002? I am surprised. When I was in college I did a huge fake ad campaign for MiniDiscs, another crappy product from Sony that was incompatible with existing technology and required full commitment of adopters. It only ever caught on in Japan.

I thought MiniDiscs were cool. It's just that Sony does that whole communistic proprietary technology thing that you're talking about, and I hate them. Well, that's what we have to thank Warner Brothels for; the future of DVD is Blu-Ray, and Sony is going to make the consumer pay dearly for it!